Scottish Ballet: Emergence, Glasgow review: 'breathtaking'

Scottish Ballet: Emergence, Theatre Royal, Glasgow ★★★★

Evolve or die, as the saying goes, and Scottish Ballet clearly has no intention of dying. A few years’ shy of its 60th anniversary, the company is committed to pushing the envelope, both with new film These Violent Delights and with its current double-bill, a clear indicator of bold, fearless programming.

Crystal Pite’s Emergence is the obvious draw here, reappearing ten years after Scottish Ballet first blew our minds with it at the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival. Pite is a global force to be reckoned with, and this monumental ensemble work sweeps you up in its twitchy, meticulous, synchronised movement. Comparing a ballet company to a hive of insects, each with their own task but working as a united whole, Emergence is not a piece to be tackled lightly. If a company isn’t at the top of its game, they’ll be devoured by it.

Here, we find all 40 of Scottish Ballet’s dancers moving with breathtaking precision. The men, bare-chested save for painted designs on their shoulders, swoop their arms as one unit, while the women, busy staccato pointe shoes evoking the sound of flapping wings, flood the stage like an army on the march. If there’s one tiny downside, it’s the dim lighting, robbing us of some of the intricacies of movement and costuming.

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The same could be said for Julia Cheng’s brand new work Entress, a dark piece in every possible sense. Named after the word meaning “the right to enter”, Cheng’s subtle narrative finds the dancers dressed in loose black clothing, seeking a sense of kinship. Beneath a large, billowing net, and using earthy, floor-based choreography, they move swam-like across a raised platform.

Some are part of the pack, others clearly not, and as Cheng’s angular yet fluid movement unfolds, matching the weighty score note for note, the metaphor is not lost on us.

Scottish Ballet: Emergence is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, until 12 September; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 25-26 September; and the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 1-3 October

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